1000 fake accounts squatted by one person

in steemit •  8 years ago  (edited)

The problem

I know of one individual who managed to register ~1000 accounts with about 50 free STEEM power pr account. ~50000 STEEM is in this persons control now. This is a problem because it gives too much power to individuals with dubious moral standards. If this kind of abuse is discovered after the fact It's currently not possible to do Justice and take back the STEEM given for free.

The solution

Instead of giving new accounts free SP it should be possible to allocate some of your SP to any account temporarily and revoke this SP allocation if malicious behavior is discovered in the future. If the new account turns out to be virtues long range the SP can be handed over permanently. If it turns out one person has created all these accounts using fake identity's all the temp-SP can be revoked and Justice is done. This will probably prevent this kind of abuse from ever happening in the first place.

Additional advantages

If you don't have time to curate with all your voting power you can hand over your SP to different people you trust for a periode of time so they can curate on your behalf until you revoke it again.

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1000 accounts ?

Meh, I remember when I only had 1000 accounts...

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Instead of giving new accounts free SP it should be possible to allocate some of your SP to any account temporarily and revoke this SP allocation if malicious behavior is discovered in the future.

So what you're saying is you want the proposed version of voting guilds? :P

Abuse of the Steemit.com registration is a potential issue that should receive more white-hat attacking to mitigate any exploits. So far the owner of those accounts hasn't used them in a very negative fashion as far as I can tell, but it would be more of a problem if he or someone else with a bunch of exploit-acquired accounts does.

As a witness, I have my account creation "fee" set at 20 STEEM. I would lower it to 10 if the goal of "your account is worth $x" is abandoned. Steemit actually makes accounts with their @steem account with their own amount setting actually, but the minimum is the median account creation fee between the witness' settings. Currently, the network median account creation amount is 30 STEEM but the @steem account is making new accounts with 40 Steem Power.

The Steem team are considering alternatives including something similar to your proposal: delegated bandwidth.

The issue with cheaper accounts then becomes namesquatting with the squatter's actual money being used. What happens if it becomes reasonably cheap to namesquat with your own funds? Can you think of a reasonable solution to mitigate that?

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Yes. Delegated bandwidth is the term I was looking for. Thanks. With respect to namesquatting. Maybe automatic auctions on dictionary words could be a solution. Or just adding a fixed cost to registering popular words.

¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯

Good point.

Do you know if it is against the Steemit terms to open more than one account?

I can think of many legimate reasons to open more than one account. For an example if you want to manage various industry blogs.

I only own one account myself, but I could easily see myself having the need to split personal topics from industry topics into different accounts. Is that accepted by Steemit?

Thank you.
You are hereby followed.

ronni

It's no problem to have several accounts so you have create different brands. And this issue is solved by delegated steem power.

Thank you. Couldn't this be a problem if people opened several accounts and then used them to upvote each other? Wouldn't that drain money from the system to those individuals who exploited this unfair advantage?

Sure. Hence my post. But it's limited to the stake they managed to collect.

But even if they receive nothing for free..

If for an example a user opens up two accounts and then deposits 50/50 to each out of his total budget. Then he goes on to use each account to upvote the other. That will make him earn the upvote + curation rewards. The curation rewards would not be included had he upvoted himself with one account only.

Wouldn't that drain the system somewhat?

Tak
ronni

Yes. But you risk flags if your posts are bad. Never forget to flag bad posts.

multiple accounts for projects like steemtrails makes some sense to me but to acquire 1000 accounts or whatever just for getting the SP is insane.

Begs the question if we have a user retention issue or too many useless accounts due to actions like this?

looks like noganoo read this post and implemntd iut lol

i think he is talking about noganoo himself

meep

what are the account names? list this huckster in the blockchain. let the steemians decide what to do. i might be stupid, but i've only ever had one account. to have more than i need seems like thievery. let the steemians decide.

i've never used the flag, but i'm warming up the flag button now.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

@noganoo is the perpetrator I know about but there are others. I don't have a complete list. Here are a few for sale on peerhub:

thank you.
how do you identify these?

Some kind of pattern recognition analyzing the blockchain. I am no expert.

Who will decide and impose Justice?
If somebody invest in steem power to curate and get return on his or her investment why one should give it away? It's not illegal to use voting bots. We know what investment is for, right?

Who will decide and impose Justice?

The person who gives out the Delegated bandwidth to new accounts.

If somebody invest in steem power to curate and get return on his or her investment why one should give it away? It's not illegal to use voting bots. We know what investment is for, right?

I have no problem with investors. Just free accounts that is given free STEEM.

It looks like I don't have a clue how this thing works. I would like to know why regular people need to take stupid photos with date and steemit sign to open account. So humiliating. When somebody can create 1000 accounts and get 50000 steempower? That is not good promotion for steemit for sure.

Hense my proposal. To prevent and/or reduce abuse.

I agree with you, but I don't see how we can change this. Still looks kind of centralized to me and it shouldn't be. Hope I'm wrong.

i think 8 months later u have learned about steemit now?

Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean.

its ok, i was responding to a 9 month old post! i was hoping nby now u would know more about how ths teemit accounst work etc, its still a big mystery to many, and it will become mroe an moree clear

and i ant claim to even know that much about it!

I am just glad u responded to a comment from 8 months ago that i replied to lats night!

XD godo job keepposting man!

This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the second half of Jan 08. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $7.61 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.

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Look at how many votes this post has. Someone has made their point.

I miss your calmness and intelligent banter mughat!

@noganoo sitting on those accounts is a waste if he doesn't develop them into something.. Personally I think squatting like that is a low form of attempted income but I guess some people can only grasp low hanging fruit.. :/

sup @klye dude fun talking with u and @mughat and @battleaxe and everyone else in discord